A Boston College sports blog capturing the highs and lows of being a BC fan living 1,000 miles from Chestnut Hill.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Is the Northeast a better recruiting territory than we realize?

The above map was part of a series posted on Deadspin Monday. It is a per capita display of where college football players come from. If you look at their other maps you will see that the Northeast (for this purpose Washington, D.C. north) produces a lot of college football players. I used the per capita map to show that even though this area is densely populated, it is not a wasteland that some make it out to be. New Jersey remains the focal point of the region.

Obviously parts of New England are barren, but the maps does show that Massachusetts and Connecticut produce relatively in line with other areas that people would assume are better (Western PA, pockets of the Midwest, large swaths of California).

Where players come from doesn't tell the whole story. The type of talent is a factor that the map doesn't cover. Aside from the mythical speed in other areas, I would say that many prospects in New England and the Northeast lack skills and would benefit from better year-round programs and better high school competition. But considering it is only our base and we continue to recruit the Midwest and Southeast, I would say BC is not as disadvantaged geographically as some assume.

9 Comments:

Wow. So much could be said. No one, even me, would say the northeast is barren, but look at that map. Boston, NY, Philly. Three of the top ten markets in the US so poorly represented. This is cultural. People not from or acquainted with the southeast would never understand that maybe the biggest piece of the emotional sports pie is directed toward college football. It's literally 24/7/365 down here and always has been. Yet, no one says anything when GB, Cincy, and Indy need extensions to sell out a NFL playoff game. Oh, but southern cities are so bad at pro sports. Right. How simplistic. Indy has a dome. GB has literally nothing else. Cincy too.

Let's put it this way. Urban Meyer, clearly the best college coach outside of the SEC, needs to out-recruit hIs conference by a huge margin. SEC coaches don't need to do the same, simply because there is so much talent in the South.

I was excited to see FSU win the title. But they had more talent than Auburn. But it's freakin' FSU. Recruiting NJ and western Pa just isn't the same. In a down year, the SEC still finished with three of the top five in the country. That's why I love reading the ramblings of some posters on here, like Nedfromwhocares who know NOTHING about college ball. Seven out of eight with a second isn't too shabby. The ACC should be so lucky in college basketball.

I'm telling you. This is more about Friday nights than you know. That map is confirmation, if you still needed any.

We should embrace what/where/who we are by doing what we could do as well as anybody. Not recruit athletes from New York or Mass (really?), but go big, maul people, be the Seahawks of the northeast. We will hardly ever compete with the South based on athletes alone. Just won't happen. The good news is that there are many ways to skin a cat. Build the lines. Cope with the rest.

It looks like the large swaths of California to which you refer are the less populated farmlands. Touting the fact that the population-rich Northeast produces the same amount of football players as the farmlands of California is pretty sad. And let's not even compare the northeast to the South. Face it, the Northeast is a wasteland of talent compared to a large portion of the country, despite having a huge population advantage.